


Tear our skin up out from the bottom (Leaves our ankles bare)

by orphan_account



Series: Rotten Miracles [1]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gen, JENSEN THE PIRATE, cougar glaring is not a valid life choice, jensen/aisha is my BroTP and greatest weakness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first bit of my Ante Up 2013 gift. Aisha's part.</p>
<p>It's a tale of fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles... or, the Princess Bride/Losers fusion you probably didn't want but I gave you anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tear our skin up out from the bottom (Leaves our ankles bare)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yabamena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yabamena/gifts).



> For yabamena. You said you liked AUs, I sincerely hope you meant it.
> 
> I apologize for shitty character writing. I was trying to think how Aisha would be if she wasn't the daughter of a child trafficker and actually had a friend growing up. Obviously, she's still the HBIC. All mistakes are mine.

 

The year Aisha ad Fadhil was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. Aisha, as most babies are wont to do, gave not a single fuck about this and proceeded to scream her way into the world. The screaming didn't stop for several years, really; for all the tacit judgment she doled out in her later years, Aisha really was something of a drama queen in her youth. This stopped shortly before her fourth birthday when she realized that if you were loud, you got attention, but if you were quiet, you got away.

When Aisha was ten, the most beautiful girl in the world was the daughter of a successful tea merchant from Bengal named Aluthra. As it would happen, Aisha also ignored this trivia, as the beauty of the girl was of far less import than the disease which ultimately took that beauty away and whether or not it would spread. It did not, and if the second most beautiful girl in the world suddenly found herself elevated to first place, Aisha remained uncaring.

When Aisha turned fifteen, a woman in Sussex named Adela Terrell found herself to be the most beautiful creature in existence and promptly fretted her looks away. Unsurprisingly, Aisha was unaware of this happening and wouldn't have particularly cared if she had known. Beauty had never really been a primary concern of hers-- she was loath to bathe more often than absolutely necessary and would rather pull back her hair into a ponytail resembling a dark hedgehog than comb it-- which was a pity, since she had pulled into the twentieth most beautiful woman of her time on potential alone. With any attention to image, she could have easily risen into the top ten, emerging with the kind of beauty that stopped people in their tracks and prompted musicians to song. Unfortunately, the musicians would have to find muses elsewhere, because at fifteen, Aisha had two hobbies: learning to use the knives she had stolen from her father and enjoying a specific breed of friendship with the farm boy her father hired that boiled down to her ordering him about and then following along to mock him as he worked and him good-naturedly sniping back.

Calling Jake Jensen "boy" was a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but when he had first come to Aisha's father asking for work with a pregnant (and unwed) sister in tow, his voice had still crackled and his face had been smooth and so Farm Boy he had been. Now, however, Jake had grown both upwards-- courtesy of a somewhat belated growth spurt-- and outwards as the farm work began to gift him with a certain type of brawn. It wasn't long until Aisha realized that the scrawny, sunburnt youth that had run through mud puddle with her and believed her about collecting human ears was now the kind of handsome, all golden hair and blue eyes, that had the village girls trailing behind him like goslings.

It was  _hilarious._

 Oh, it did nothing to endear her to her female peers, but then, since the day she'd first sprouted hips and breasts, nothing had. While the rock-headed boys had followed her like a pack of slobbering mutts, the other girls had glared from between perfectly coifed hair and fashionably ruffled dresses. "You've stolen them," Maggie Carpenter had hissed at her one day in the market. Aisha wondered vaguely if "them" was supposed to refer to the knives her father had yet to notice were missing or the candies from the cart on the corner of Indigo and Fizzing. As if sensing her remark was wont of clarification, she leaned even closer to spit, "The  _boys!_ " in Aisha's face. Aisha blinked for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Who  _cared?_  Who cared if a couple of the village's seemingly endless supply of idiots tracked her through the market? She was better than them, and she had better than them. She had Jensen. Why would any girl want for a man to sweep her away and cover her in riches and kisses when there were Jensens out there, with more brains than an entire village combined and a sense of adventure? Jensen, Aisha had long been sure, was the best. He didn't stare at her chest, or expect her to ride side-saddle, or think her a failure because of her apathy towards her looks. He not only refused to tattle on her when she stole sweets from vendors, he  _helped._  And while Aisha was positive she would never love a man in a way that meant marriage and babies, she was sure Jensen was the only family she would ever want and loved him with all her heart.

Of course, it all had to change. Aisha, though she didn't know it, was the heroine of a story, and thus, according to the laws of narrative, had to suffer a great loss. It happened in the autumn of her nineteenth year.

Her parents had always had certain expectations concerning their beautiful, relatively well-off daughter. In this time period, of course, “expectations” meant “marriage.” Aisha wasn’t particularly fond of the practice. After all, she had Jensen, Sarah, tiny Thursday, a good horse, better knives. Why would she ever ruin that? But her parents, being her parents, were quite insistent. After several unmitigated disasters masquerading as dates (“Isn’t the weather nice today, Aisha?” “I guess.” “Wow, that woman knows her way around a cow bell, eh, Aisha?” “I guess.” “You just think you’re so much better than everyone, don’t you, Aisha?” “Well, yes.”), the plan was born. Or, well. The plan made a valiant attempt at being born, but fell sadly flat, at which point they decided things would just have to work themselves out. Aisha wasn’t pleased because using the term “half-baked” to describe anything she did was actually painful, and Jensen wasn’t pleased because not knowing everything annoyed him, and Sarah wasn’t pleased because she fretted terribly about her brother and his friend but understood anyways. Jensen had renamed their plan Operation: Kookaburra because if he went ten minutes without being _completely ridiculous_ his brain would melt and he’d collapse in on himself (“Why kookaburra?” “Because, baby, _we are breaking you out of this nest._ ” “Jesus _wept,_ Jensen, that is _not how kookaburras work_.”). It worked like this: Jensen, who had no legal obligations to stay on the al Fadhil’s staff, would seek his fortune in the New World, as was quite popular at the time. When Jensen, being Jensen and therefore a genius, had amassed a fortune, he would send word to Aisha, who would then run away and join him. Then, they would live happily ever after off their tobacco and indigo sales. It was, admittedly, a horrendous idea, but they were running out of time, and if there was anyone that it would work for, it was Jensen. Aisha had always marveled at his luck. It was as though the universe as a whole was in love with him; but then, who wouldn’t be. Jensen, Aisha thought as she watched the _Patroclus_ cut her way through the dark water, was exactly the sort of man who could stand for hours in a storm and never get so much as damp.

Of course, in the end, it wasn’t a storm she needed to fear. Not exactly.

For three weeks, Aisha’s parents noticed a marked change in their daughter. She bathed when asked, brushed her hair every day, and made no complaint when her parents asked her to come inside. “It’s because that Jensen boy’s gone,” they told each other. “He was a bad influence on her.” They ignored the way that Aisha couldn’t quite contain her smirk, as though she was aware of something they weren’t. To be completely honest, they were too busy trying to replace the staff they had lost (what with Jensen sailing to the other side of the ocean and Sarah having moved to the countryside until Thursday was old enough to travel overseas) to pay much attention. At the same time (though Aisha could have cared less), she slowly began rising through the ranks of beauty. By the end of the first week, she had knocked eleven other candidates down a notch. By the beginning of the third week, she was the seventh most beautiful; by the end of it, the fifth. Her parents were ecstatic.  And so, for three weeks, the al Fadhils had a normal family life fueled by deceit and subterfuge (because this was before the creation of soap operas but absolutely _nothing_ came before family drama). And in the fourth week, the world ended, not with a bang but with a knock.

After the nice messenger apologized for the confusion and went off to find Sarah’s current residence, taking his piece of paper with words like “Jensen” and “condolences” far, far away, Aisha…did nothing.   

She did nothing as random townsfolk told her they were sorry for her loss, though she disagreed with the sentiment. Stolen cattle were a loss. Jensen was a fucking tragedy. She did nothing as the seasons turned without her, without the blonde-haired boy with the sunshine smile. And, perhaps most fatefully, she did nothing as men expressed interests in her that her parents only encouraged. Happy, Aisha was the fifth loveliest woman in the world. In her sorrow, she was exquisite. She was nineteen and the most beautiful creature in creation.

It was fortunate, if only in that this newfound pulchritude allowed her to turn down suitors at will. After all, if the most gorgeous woman in the universe couldn’t be afforded some amount of choice, who could? Unfortunately, two months After Jensen, a count named Wade decided to try his six-fingered hand at wooing her. He was swiftly dismissed, but within the week he had informed the morally dubious Prince Max of a woman of untold beauty. I took _him_ a week and a half to arrive with an army of slaves and enough gold to buy Aisha’s entire town, and the next besides. Personally, Aisha thought it all silly. She needed no slaves at all, why couldn’t the prince manage? Obviously, he wasn’t the prodigy that his court boasted. In addition, something about him severely unnerved her. It was like he was a walking façade, the man inside having burned away and left nothing but an unfeeling, doll-like husk. She avoided him to the best of her considerable ability, which is why it took him three days to corner her.

“Darling,” he purred to her, casually standing between her and the door of the barn, “I can make you the richest and best-dressed woman on Earth. People will fall into stupors from gazing at your splendor.”

Aisha half-heartedly cast a glance at the splinter-lined windows. “On might think, my lord, that a good king would want his subjects of sound health and mind.”

“Clever thing.” The prince seemed only more delighted by her answer. “Why not be a clever queen?”

Leveling him with her most potent glare, Aisha grit out the sentiment she had told to numerous suitors countless times: “I will never love you. Regardless of you money, and slaves, and clothes, I will _never be able to bring myself to love you,_ nor any other man.”

Half a second of genuine surprise flitted across Max’s face before he donned a mask of shock and placed one hand over his heart. “Love? Darling, who ever said a thing about love?” Leaning in slightly, he added, “Unlike your previous suitors, dear, I know better than to expect you to turn doe-eyed and soft after being married off. I want to marry because you’re the great beauty of our time, and it will put the people at ease with my inevitable rule. In return, I offer the life of a monarch.”

“And what of true love?” Aisha asked, her smile more than a little bitter.

“Let it wither and die on the vine.”

\---

The curve of Aisha’s lips was more honest than it had been since the sea had taken something irreplaceable. “Then by all means, let us be wed immediately.”

It wasn't long until she began to regret this decision. In fact, it took eight days, six hours, and twelve minutes. Or, until Max took out a gorgeous, finely crafted revolver and shot a servant in the head while they were out on an evening stroll along the beach. Her name had been Anna, and she had tripped while holding his umbrella. As the blood and brain matter began sinking in to the gleaming sand, he turned to Aisha and gave a dazzling parody of a smile. "Sorry about the staff, darling. You'll have to learn how to deal with incompetence." Aisha thinned her lips and clenched her hands, hidden by massive skirts, against the tremors. She had seen her father execute thieves and traitors, but never an innocent girl who had liked lemon sweets and had a little brother she doted on. Max's grin only grew wider.

_I haven't been betrothed to a man,_ Aisha thought,  _but a crocodile, and very soon he shall eat me up._

She was almost entirely correct, you see, though she did not know at the time of his true plan. What she was unaware of then, and what you shall be told now, was that Max was keen to acquire lands that were property of Gilder, the neighboring kingdom. He fully planned to use the tragic, untimely murder of his fair and widely beloved queen as a means to start a war.

At the time, though, Aisha’s only concerns were not dragging her heavy skirts through the dull, reddened sand as Max swept her along, girl and parasol lying forgotten along the shore, ignoring her stumbling. It seemed Max had anticipated Aisha’s resistance to his charms and had pre-ordered an entire wardrobe for her, made entirely out of clothes that made running, never mind a decent escape attempt, impossible. The entire collection features heavy, puffy skirts like shimmering sails and swooping necklines that displayed more décolletage that was, perhaps, strictly necessary. Max, thankfully, rarely took notice; Aisha thought wickedly that perhaps if it had been Wade with a good part of his chest bared, Max might have paid more heed. Indeed, the man and all his eleven fingers were a constant presence in the castle. It wasn’t jealousy that fueled Aisha’s distaste for the man—if anything, she was grateful for the distraction from Max and his attentions—but now she had to avoid not only her bloodthirsty betrothed but his watchdog. It ended up taking her a full five months to finalize her escape plans.

Aisha’s own handmaiden was a sour, tight-faced woman who liked nothing more than gossip, save getting rewarded for her information. She was, as a whole, generally unpleasant, which made Aisha’s scheme all that much easier.

Since coming to the castle, Aisha had been plagued by nightmares, or rather, one nightmare. In it, she wore a glowingly white gown and walked down the aisle to Max, as the citizens of the kingdom stood on either side. When she was about halfway there, she would hear a voice. “Boo, boo!” it would cry out, “Boo, for the Queen of Garbage! The Tsarina of Filth and the Empress of Muck. She had happiness enough, and in her greed she wanted more! She traded it all away for gold! Rave over the beauty of the Sultana of Cesspools, but not I. Not I!” And when Aisha would look for the source of the creaking voice, she would see, about two rows back, an old hag completely covered in grey raggedy cloth.  “I did,” she would tell the crone, “what I had to do. To be free. What I had was not happiness. How can you, standing there in your filth, judge me?” (Which was, of course, horridly impolite, but Aisha was hardly responsible for insults given in her sleep.) The old woman pushed her way to the front, her voice ringing clearer. Aisha stumbled backs step. "Stop! Now!" And the woman would. Slowly, she reached up to her tattered hood and pulled away the entirety of the gauzy, grey fabric and, in that one movement, grew several feet. Suddenly, the hag wasn't a hag anymore, but a tall, well-built man with dirty yellow hair and a smile as wide-"Jensen?" Aisha smiled, because in her dream the logic of his nearly year-long absence didn't settle in, and she didn't feel the ache of missing him, because he was just _there_. "Jensen, why were you dressed that way? Are you here to spirit me away? I'm supposed to be getting married, but I'll leave with you if you'd rather." Here, Jensen would open his mouth to speak, but instead of words, foamy seawater poured from his mouth. It ran down his shirt and pooled at his boots. Soon, the short, spiky points of his hair were weighted and dripping with it, his whole body being completely drenched. He reached one soaked hand out to Aisha, who suddenly found she could not move, though she knew that if she took his hand they would both be saved. He smiled at her, a little sadly, with red lining the tops of his teeth around his gums. The deep gash in his throat-- and when had that happened?-- spat crimson down a shirt that had been white, blood and water mixing and fading to pink. Suddenly, she was looking not at Jensen, but at his bloated corpse, pieces of flesh pulling away from the bone.

As always, she woke to find her nightgown soaked through and her cheeks wet.

These dreams were hardly relevant, except that Hedda soon reported them to Max, who made a show of fussing over his bride-to-be before hiring the court physician to make her a tincture to allow her to sleep soundly through the night. She soon discovered that taking a half dose worked just as well (which was somewhat disturbing), and by the time she was ready to escape she had a vial and a half saved, hidden away in the back of her overflowing wardrobe. When Hedda brought their evening meal, it took only moments to stash the liquid in the folds of her dress, and then it was all a matter of a distraction and a quick hand. When Hedda was safely and solidly asleep, Aisha went to work. When Max had assigned her as the future queen's handmaiden, he had counted on several things: that she would watch everything Aisha did, that she would report directly to him, and that she would value his money over loyalty to her mistress. One thing he hadn't considered was that she and Aisha were roughly the same size. After Aisha has stripped her former servant, she grabbed her bag from where it was hidden behind her headboard. Then, in her much less restrictive clothing, she hurriedly grabbed the miscellaneous odds and ends she had gathered. The hooded cloth she had rendered unadorned she wrapped around her shoulders, the length of rope went heavily over a shoulder, the riding gloves she slid onto fingers that clenched and unclenched, remembering the textures they had known before dainty silks had bidden them to forget. She firmly attached the rope to one bed post-- God bless overindulgent royals and their extravagant, heavy furniture-- and tossed the other end out of her window. She sat on her windowsill and looked at a view she would never again see from this vantage point, and her stomach churned. It was like there was a creature in her belly, smelling fresh air and awakening after so long to stretch and twist wildly. Her breath came in soft gasps, stopping just short of laughter. She swung her legs over so that they dangled over yards of nothing. Grasping the rope tightly in gloved hands, she eased herself over the edge. Working down the rope so that she was relying on her ankles more than her hands, the way Jensen had taught her to with a rope swing dangling from an apple tree-- "Come on, Ash, this is the easy bit!"-- she went lower and lower until she had two feet left of rope and seven feet till the ground. She sighed, but her mother, in spite of herself, hadn't raised a coward. Breathing in, then out, she relaxed, awkwardly adjusting her bag and letting go of the rope and landing with a thick thud. She lay there for a minute, then pulled in a shaky breath to make sure she could and dusted herself off as best she could. She was sore but still all in one piece, though she suspected the riding she was about to be doing would do her no favors. Knowing that staying would do her far less, she pushed on.

She didn’t bother with the castle’s horses, knowing that their disappearance would probably be noticed before her. Instead, she concentrated on getting past the guard as quietly as possible. It was almost painfully easy, with her dark cloak blending in with the night air and practiced feet creeping silently along the cobblestones. Max’s perhaps only love was hunting; he had made a mistake in bringing her along. She had watched, and she had learned, and if he could sneak up on a fox, she could escape past the guards.

Once that had been accomplished, it was only a matter of stealing a horse from the stable by the Vezzing Inn. And then… then, she had done it. She was free. She was _free._ She could… she could go to the coast, or buy a cottage in the mountains, or… or…

But that wasn’t permanent, she realized after about an hour of riding. Money wasn’t an issue, as she had taken some of the lesser quality jewelry that could be pawned without problem. The issue was where she would go. Aisha briefly considered going to Sarah, but quickly squashed that thought. She harbored a deeply-rooted fear that Sarah held her responsible for Jensen’s death because, well, wasn’t she? She had wanted something and she had killed her friend for it. In the end, she decided to ride towards Gilder. It was in the grey hours nearing daybreak when she came across three men, one who wore a hat, one with a scar over his right eye, and one who walked in front of the two of them. The leader was the one who waved at her. Aisha considered making a run for it, but then figured that they were miles from anyone who they could turn her in to and if they wished to be untoward, well, she had a knife for that.

Her decision was fortuitous. If she had kept riding, then she would have been recognized by officials in Gilder (who _didn’t_ want a war) and turned back in to an irate Max and that’s where it would have ended. But she didn’t, and so we have a story.

When she was close enough that she could pick out the pale patches in the beard of the man beckoning to her, she called out, “Can I help you, sirs?”

“Yes. My name is Clay, and my comrades and I,” here he gestured back at his men, “were wondering if you could direct us to the capital.” Here, he looked directly at her face, and his eyes widened as his smile faded, then returned. “Ah, I did not realize I was in the presence of royalty.” Aisha cursed herself for not lifting her hood, but kept her stoic façade in place and said nothing. This only seemed to amuse Clay further.

“Actually, princess, my men and I are traveling salesmen who have covered for miles in this day. We will journey to the capital later; as for now, is there a town nearby where we may rest?”

“Not for miles,” was Aisha’s somewhat curt reply, because the trio before her were very clearly not traveling salesmen.

“Excellent. Then there will be no one to hear you scream.”

Well, fuck that. Aisha hadn’t just run away from her homicidal betrothed to be murdered by some jackass in a forest. She had standards. Her form as she threw the knife at the man lunging for her was possibly not the best, but as she was also urging her horse into a gallop at the same time, she could hardly be blamed. Behind her, she could hear indignant shouts, and then—

_KRAKOW!_

\-- and then she was flying, and then she was landing, and then nothing, nothing, nothi-

She woke up on a ship.

It wasn’t, by any means, the first time Aisha had woken up with a blinding headache. When she was fifteen, she and Jensen had pilfered part of her father’s stash of rum and she had promptly come down with an awful case of the “flu”, unable to stand bright lights and puking for a day and a half. Jensen, the bastard, had been fine. This was different, especially when she found that she couldn’t lift her head to rub at her temples and she was beginning to suspect the rocking wasn’t just in her head.

Slitting her eyes open, she attempted to peer out but could only make out the wooden side of a boat and a whole lot of blue. She sat completely still, trying to see if she could hear or smell anything useful.

“Clay! The bitch is awake!” Aisha assumed that meant her. Sighing, she opened her eyes all the way and slumped back against—what was she tied to, anyways? The mast? She was facing the back of the boat, all she could see was deck, a few coils of rope, the side, and an angry man with a new bandage around his left bicep. She smiled.

“So, I’m pretty sure that this is the bit where you twiddle your moustaches and reveal your evil plan as I tremble girlishly in fear,” she called over her shoulder.

“Well, now,” said Clay, stepping into her line of view and walking over to her, “the only one here with a moustache is Cougar, and he’s not much of a twiddler. Or a talker. Pretty good with a gun, though. You can thank him for that nice bump on your head.” He squatted down in front of her, pushing back on her forehead with his palm and pulling up first one eyelid, then the other with his thumb.

“He shot the horse?” she asked. It wasn’t as though it mattered, but she wasn’t particularly keen to let her merry band of kidnappers think her frightened.

“He shot at your horse’s hooves, it’s fine. Ran off in what I’d assume is the direction of town.” He stood up.

“Mmm. Not my horse.” Seeing the question forming on his face, Aisha cut him off. “So. Am I horribly damaged? And do I get to hear your evil plan? I really am quite curious.”

Clay’s upper lip curled. “No concussion. You’ll live. For someone who was just thrown from a horse and kidnapped, you’re surprisingly flippant; though, considering who you were bedding, I’m hardly surprised.” His tone was sharp and biting, like winter. He started walking back and forth across the deck. It was all very dramatic, Aisha thought, amused despite her ire. “That’s why you’re here you know. Your husband. He took something from us, so now, we’re taking something from him.”

Aisha smiled, holding back her laughter.

“You got something to say, your majesty?” the angry, scarred man asked.

“Just that it’ll never work,” she responded.

“And why is that?” Clay stopped pacing. His eyebrows were furrowed and his jaw tight. For an unshaven man in an old suit, he managed to look quite dangerous. Aisha only glanced down at her bound hands, then back up at Clay, quirking an eyebrow. Clay ground his teeth, then took a knife out of his belt and started towards her.

“Woah, Clay, what are you doing, because it looks like you might be cutting the crazy bitch loose,” protested the scarred man. Clay didn’t respond, just reached behind Aisha and sawed at the ropes until they came apart. Aisha rubbed at her wrists, then pushed herself up. Between the head injury and the motion of the boat, this turned out to not be the best plan and she ended up grabbing onto the mast for support. Once she was reasonably sure she wouldn't fall or be sick, she used her handhold to edge around so she could see the front of the boat, standing as straight as she could.

There were two more people in the boat. The first, she recognized from the forest. Between the mustache and the guns, she guessed he must be Cougar.

The other was at the helm of what Aisha assumed was a large fishing boat. The sun shone off of the back of his bald head and he was whistling.

Cougar looked up from where he was scraping dirt from under his nails with a wicked looking knife. His hair was long and dark and pulled away from his neck, a brown hat with a patch on the side tugged down to keep the sun from his eyes. He reminded Aisha, painfully, of the son of one of her father's business partners whose big, brown eyes she hand Jensen had jokingly swooned over at the age of fourteen.

Clay and Mr. Angry Face circled around. Clay swiveled on his heel to face her. "So?"

"So," Aisha said, mustering as much dignity as she could without heaving, "I believe that in polite society, this is the bit where you introduce me to the lovely gentlemen who aided in my kidnapping."

Jerking his head back at Mr. Angry Face, Clay said, "I’m Clay, this is Roque, that's Cougar, and the man at the helm," the bald man stopped whistling to turn around, smile, and wave before turning back around and resuming the tune, "is Pooch. Now, what  _I_ want to hear is why our plan is going to fail."

"Because," Aisha responded, peering into the distance and trying to get her bearing, " he'll think I ran away."

"And why would he think that?" Clay asked. Aisha turned to him, giving him her flattest look.

Because," she said, talking slowly, as though to a child, " _I ran away_."

There was no sound, except for the creaking of the boat and the waves hitting the sides.

"...what."

"No, I'm only joking, I was just taking a ride through the woods, alone, at night, with clothes, food, and money. What did you think I was doing?"

Ignoring the slight, Clay asked, "Why, exactly, were you running away?"

"Well, given that you four apparently have some grand revenge quest against my fiancé, I wouldn't think it would be that hard to figure out." Standing, she decided, was overrated. Making her way over to a crate, she plopped down. Ah. That was better. 

Clay and Roque muttered at each other, then hissed at each other, then just sort of glared. Aisha looked over at Cougar, who met her gaze, glanced at his comrades, then shrugged and went back to his nails.

"If you don't mind me asking, miss," Roque asked after a while, his tone telling her how very little her cared if she minded or not, "if you hate this guy so much, why'd you agree to marry him?"

"I was… emotionally compromised," Aisha responded carefully, "and I made a very large mistake."

Roque whistled. "Damn. What the hell happened that put you in the kind of mindset where marrying  _Max_ seemed like a good idea?"

\\\

Well, she'd been honest so far. "I was responsible for the death of the only thing I ever truly loved." And it was true. She said it’d as flippantly as she could, but it was true. She liked her parents, was grateful to them, but never loved them. For one thing, she didn't really know them, as they were quite often busy with keeping and expanding their money, and they certainly didn't know her. She had loved Sarah and Thursday, but she had loved them as an extension of Jensen and after his death loving them had been... painful. And difficult. They were pieces of the Jensen unit, and Aisha couldn't understand how they had survived when Jake hadn't. 

"That'll do it." Roque actually sounded mildly surprised instead of generally pissed off.

That had effectively put an end to conversation on the boat. Aisha looked over the side, vaguely wondering if it would do her any good to jump over the side. Noting that there wasn't any land in sight and that she had never been the best swimmer, she decided against it. They sailed on in silence until suddenly, Cougar went completely still, staring hard at the waters behind them. He hadn't made a sound, but Clay and Roque both stiffened and joined him in glaring into the distance. Turning to see what they were staring at, she saw a ship, black against the horizon, apparently heading in the same direction as them.

“Clay, what are the chances that that’s just a friendly fisherman on his way to his favorite spot?” Roque asked. Clay shook his head.

“We’re heading towards the Cliffs of Insanity, the only thing to catch here are Shrieking Eels. Pooch!” He raised his voice to yell to the pilot, “lose ‘em! Cougar, we have a semi-kidnapped princess on board, and until proven otherwise we assume they’re with Max. You’re on lookout. You,” he pointed at Aisha, “stay out of sight, unless you want to go back to your loving fiancé.”

Aisha pushed herself in-between boxes, curling her legs in to her chest. Leaning her head back, she took a moment to ponder on the various life choices that had led her to this moment, on a boat, having been kidnapped by pirates, followed by a mysterious ship. She was still wondering about it when a sharp bark of “Clay!” came from Roque somewhere to her left.

“Goddammit, Pooch, I thought I told you to lose them.”

“We have five passengers, plus cargo. We can only go so fast. The good news is, we should be coming up on the Cliffs pretty soon.”

Curious, Aisha poked her head out from behind the box, but found herself unable to see anything that wasn’t wooden. She made to stand up before feeling a hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she realized it was attached to Cougar, who just shook his head. She plopped back on the deck. When she had played pirates as a child, she had conveniently left out the bits with neck cramps and injury-induced headaches.

“Tell me about him.” Aisha startled. She had kind of been assuming that Cougar was mute, as he had neither responded to Clay and Roque’s bickering or Pooch’s singing.

“About who?”

“The one you loved,” he responded, his accent thick. “The one you lost.”

“Oh.” Aisha shifted as best she could. “Well. He was…colonel. Or raspberry. Or hiccough. He sounds nothing like what actually he was, because description doesn’t do him justice. His name was Jensen, and he never shut up. He had the whitest teeth, and don’t ask me how because he loved sweets more than anything, but the girls in the village loved him. They would follow him like he was the answer to life, even in the middle of summer when his nose was all peely. But that was because they never actually talked to him. He had a sister, and a niece, and me. He was a good man, and then he got on a boat and he wasn’t anything anymore.”

Cougar made a little _ah_ sound. “Storm.”

Aisha shook her head. “Dread Pirate Roberts.”

Cougar didn’t say anything else, just nodded, which she guessed was his way of saying, “sorry” or “I know how you feel.” It could also have been “the only way I feel joy is through the pain of others,” but he honestly didn’t seem the type. Aisha had noted the way Clay had iron in his backbone and was obviously in charge, Roque’s scar, the way Cougar held himself, and Pooch’s apparent familiarity with running from unidentifiable ships. They reminded her of the soldiers that would come through town, and she thought she just might know why that was.

Aisha wasn't snapped out of her reverie until Pooch shouted, "Land, ho! Heading straight for the Cliffs!"

Sure enough, for the first time since she woke up, she could see something other than water, wood, and morally dubious men of action. The sheer, rocky face of the cliff rose up higher than any of the rolling hills surrounding her home town, the base misty.

It was about ten minutes by her estimations before they reached the cliff. Aisha tried to stand and faired only mildly better than the first time. Cougar reached under her arms and tugged her up, tossing her over one shoulder.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ drop me,” she hissed. Cougar, unsurprisingly, said nothing, just jumped off the boat, clanking her bottom ribs against his shoulder upon landing. Once he was on solid ground, he rolled his shoulder and leaned, depositing Aisha’s feet back on the ground. She held onto his arm, waiting for the world to stop moving and swallowing back the acidic bile rising in her throat. She turned to look back at the boat, and their pursuer caught her eye. They were much closer than they had been the last time she had seen them, close enough to make out a dark figure standing behind the wheel on the upper deck. Numb, she let go of Cougar. Behind her, Clay swore.

Up close, she could see that there was a rope dangling from the top of the cliff. Obviously, her kidnappers had put a bit of thought into this, past the whole, “knock her unconscious and put her on a boat” part.

“Alright,” Clay said, “Cougar, you go up first. Then me, then Pooch. Roque, you’re taking her highness.”

Aisha, being Aisha, could never be injured or nauseous enough to render her unable to be a snarky bitch. Raking a critical eye over Roque, she muttered “Goody”

Roque scowled. “Oi, I’m not too fond of the plan either, and I’m the one that has to lug your royal ass up that rope.”

She was about to respond when a whistle cut through the air. “Come on, guys, the Pooch has a lovely lady waiting for him, and he’d like to survive long enough to see her again.” Aisha looked over and noted that Cougar was somehow already about a quarter of the way up the rope, Clay was about then feet off the ground, and Pooch gave them a stern glare before starting to climb himself.

Grumbling, Roque undid the sash around his waist and tied Aisha or him wish her belly in his back. "Now," he told her, "put your arms around my neck. Strangle me, and I'll bite." Aisha complied, and thought it a pity he couldn't see the look she was casting at him because it was truly a beaut, and she'd had years of practice.

While Roque's admittedly impressive muscles made it obvious why he was the one chosen to carry her, the climb was a slow one. After Roque made it clear that he had no problem with cutting the sash and dropping her, she took to watching the approaching ship, breathing faster and faster as it got closer and closer until it beached alongside Clay's ship and she stopped breathing entirely. Roque still had about fifteen feet until he reached the top.

"Roque," she said, suppressing the tremors waiting to creep into her voice, "climb faster."

"I'm going as fast as I can," he answered, the strain of the climb beginning to affect his voice."

"Well, go faster, he's," she looked down again and her breath caught, "Roque,  _he's on the rope._ "

Roque swore loudly and at length, and the pace picked up. His breathing came harsher and he stank of sweat. Finally, he pulled them over the top.

"Cut the rope, for fuck's sake, cut the rope!" he called. Cougar didn't even pause before pulling out the same knife he had used on his nails and promptly sawing the rope in two. It whipped over the side and disappeared.

In the background, Pooch was laughing and saying something like, "Mother _fucker_ , that was close, eh?" but Aisha wasn't paying attention. Instead, she was edging towards the ledge. At first when she looked down, all she could feel was a dizzying sense of  _I could fall, right now, I could fall and die._ The second thing she realized, against the cliff wall...

"Oh, shit, um. Princess? Aisha? You don't need to be looking at that, a dead body isn't something you want to see." She could hear Pooch approaching from behind her, but she found herself unable to turn to him.

"There isn't one," she said. The footsteps behind her paused. "A dead body. There isn't one, because he's  _climbing the cliff._ "

"Well, that's one tenacious bastard, I'll give him that," Clay said, suddenly about two feet to her right. Aisha jerked up her head to look at him.

"I am not going back to him," she hissed. "I spent months planning to get away, and I refuse to let that be in vain. Get rid of  _that,_ " she jerked her head in the direction of the man climbing the rocks," and I'll tell you everything I can about Max. But I am  _not going back_." And there it was. There was the fire she had been missing. To think, all it had taken was an unfortunate engagement, a kidnapping, and a relentless pursuer.

“You know,” Clay said, the barest hint of amusement creeping into his voice, “if situations were different, I think I’d like you. Cougar, wait here make sure he never makes it to the top. Roque, you go a bit farther up northwest, and leave tracks. Pooch, you, me, and the princess will be heading that way.”  He tugged her in the direction opposite of Roque.

She glanced back. Roque was out of sight, and Cougar was approaching the edge. Her foot caught on a rock and she stumbled. Clay must have heard, because he called back, “Waiting on you, Princess.” She huffed out a breath and picked up her pace until she caught up to him and Pooch.

_It’s going to be fine,_ Aisha thought to herself. _If I have to force it to be fine, I will, but it will be fine. I will be fine. And no sadistic prince, cliff-climbing lackey or no, is going to stop me._

**Author's Note:**

> I believe this is the part where I make petty excuses for the brevity of this, and then apologize. Also, I'm hoping to have the next bit up within the next week.
> 
> As always, I'm on Tumblr on occamsphaser.tumblr.com. Stuff for this goes under my "rotten miracles" tag. Questions or complaints, hit me up there or in the comments.


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